Vladimir(16)

When I pulled into the gravel drive I was surprised to see that the cleaning service I used had clearly not come. There was a tipped-over garbage can from which trash was traveling across the driveway (the service usually took the garbage to the local dump). I chased crumpled fast food wrappers and drink containers, balled-up napkins, and rotten fruit skins across the lawn. The cabin, when I entered, was picked up, but there was the tacky film of use over all the surfaces, the mildewy smell of damp towels and used sheets piled up by the washing machine, toothpaste marks, and a ring of foundation left on the bathroom counter. The last tenants had been a couple with a young child and a grandmother—like how we used to travel with John’s mother before Sidney turned eight (old enough to go to the Frick) and became good enough company that we did not require a babysitter. The small bedroom, where I imagined the grandmother had stayed, smelled of powder; the big one, where the couple and their daughter must have slept, smelled of sweat.

I was sure that there were many years before my daughter would have a child, if ever. When she was very little and I would ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would say, “a mom.” And if I asked her what else, she would say, “a babysitter.” Now she was a lawyer for a not-for-profit similar to the ACLU and would perform the sign of the hex if children were mentioned. Still, I considered the small bedroom and my eventual relegation to it. If I stayed with John we would get the big bedroom, out of deference to our matriarchy and patriarchy. But if we split up, it would be cots and sofa beds and small bedrooms for me. My worth would be equal to how helpful, useful, and uncomplaining I could be. I would be tolerated as long as it was clear I appreciated the cots, the sofa beds, the small bedrooms. I would have to demonstrate gratitude for the scraps and crumbs of time, attention, money, and luxury that came my way. I would work for it, with early mornings watching the baby, or nights doing dishes after everyone fell asleep. I couldn’t be particular. Particular old women are not invited on vacations. Unless they are very rich, which I was not.

The cabin was wooden inside and out, the logs of the exterior making up the walls of the interior. The main part was one large room, the kitchen taking up one corner, a dining table in another, and the remainder a sitting room framed by two large glass doors that opened out to a small deck and a view of the lake. There was a hallway that led to the two bedrooms, two hall closets, a washer/dryer nook, and a small bathroom. I unlocked the closet where the cleaning supplies were kept. Despite feeling slightly disturbed when I saw the garbage swirling all over the lawn, and irritated that I was going to have to track down the cleaning service to ask what happened, I was looking forward to scrubbing the house. Something to get my back into. I began by drawing the microfiber feather duster over all the high surfaces to knock down the dust, then cleaning the windows, then the mid-level surfaces, and then the floors. High to low, like my mother taught me, so that the last thing to go was all the dirt you knocked down. In the bathroom I wiped down the counters and sink, scrubbed the shower, then the toilet, then got on my hands and knees to wipe the bathroom floor.

The side caddies of the refrigerator were filled with the hot sauce and dressing whims of all the combined summer renters, which I packed into a large cooler to take home. I wiped some stuck maple syrup out of a drawer and brushed some green flakes that looked like spilled frozen spinach out of the freezer. There was a lone ice cream sandwich, “S’more Flavour” printed on its label, in the back corner. I took a bite and spit it out—it was chewy with freezer burn. When the blankets, sheets, and towels were out of the dryer I folded them, wrapped them in clear plastic bags, and packed them in a large Rubbermaid garbage can that kept them safe from mold and mice and moths.

I was about to go pull the kayaks into the storage shed when I was struck with an urge I hadn’t felt, not truly, in years. The urge, the want, felt almost orgasmic, like being inches away from someone’s mouth, knowing you are about to kiss them for the first time. It was the real and true urge to write—not the “sit down and make yourself write” feeling, in which you perform a number of tricks to start the words flowing, if they ever do, but the desperate desire to actually grip a pen and watch as ink travels over the page. The actual urge to say something.

Of course, there was barely anything to write on in the cabin. Unwilling to destroy any of the books by writing in their back pages or margins, I rummaged through the house until I remembered a pack of Post-its I’d left in the drawer with the long lighter for the grill. I scratched the lone pen against the paper for several seconds before the ink began to flow.

I wrote until the sun went down. Post-it after Post-it, all the while my body vibrating with that near-sexual energy. It was the beginning of a story. A story about improbability, about coincidence meeting circumstance. It was a fairy tale—or the start of one—about what one hopes to happen, against all odds, happening. The voice I wrote with felt new to me—unrestrained. For years I had been trying to cool down the temperature of my writing, to pull it back, pull it back, pull it back—neutralize it, contain it, make it crisp, clear, and sharp, every word carved out of crystal. This writing was nothing like that—it was drippy, messy, breezy. I was working through a mind frame, not a conceit. I was creating a world, not words on a page.

I found the writing so intoxicating that I even considered stopping to masturbate—engorged with the creative juice, to use a hackneyed phrase, that was rushing through my veins. But the sheer ease with which I wrote was too precious. I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to preserve this tingling energetic tension that pulsed within me.